


until i see the first star of fall

by Polly_Summerisle



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Armitage Hux Needs A Hug, Armitage Hux needs the whole galaxy tbh, Everyone lives, First Kiss, First Time, Gingerpilot Week 2020, M/M, Post-TRoS, Protective Poe Dameron, but angst nevertheless, not quite enemies but definitely lovers, space Northern Europe, space beer, space sheep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:26:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25182466
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Summerisle/pseuds/Polly_Summerisle
Summary: Sometimes home and pain are intertwined. Sometimes they are not.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Armitage Hux
Comments: 11
Kudos: 49
Collections: Gingerpilot Week 2020





	until i see the first star of fall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [M y r t u s (M_yrtus)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/M_yrtus/gifts).



> All my love and gratitude to the roughly ten individuals which constitute the Gingerpilot fandom.
> 
> Written for Gingerpilot Week Day 1: Homeworld.

The brownish grass, wet with rain, had long since given way to the trees. The old pier, its ghastly silhouette devoured by water and mist, was now hidden by the side of the hill.  
Hux was walking up fast, the hood of his parka lowered over his eyes. A drop of rain ran along the waxed fabric, stopped on the edge, fell over his eyelashes.  
Dameron was following him a short distance away, and the heavy noise of his boots was the only audible sound in the whole forest.

_It was supposed to be here._

Here, beyond the top of the hill, past the woods, where the river greets the valley.

Hux, the nonbeliever, prayed that nothing had survived, not even the foundations.

"Is it still far?", asked the voice behind him, and Hux felt like he was going to throw up.

Not that he had a choice. Dameron had wanted to prove a point - either to himself or to his comrades or much more likely to Hux - and Hux could not refuse.  
War prisoners had no choice. War criminals, even less.

But the house was not in ruins.

Hux leapt down the side of the hill, uncaring of the branches and roots that made him stumble, of Dameron's voice calling him and of his steps chasing him and of the hand that had closed around his elbow, firm but gentle and accompanied by an alarmed look, in which he seemed to glimpse suspicion and indecision and something painfully similar to worry.

"I'm not trying to escape," the justification was pathetic even to his own ears.

Something in Dameron's face seemed to soften.

"I know."

They reached the slope of the hill together. There was a path leading out of the woods, unfolding between blankets of plowed fields. Hux took one step, and then another.

"What did you see?"

Dameron's voice had the color of wet leaves.

"A ghost."

\--

Another step. The soil of the fields was soft and dark, and smelled like rain.

"Hugs." The sound of a boot in a puddle. "I'm sorry. Please, talk to me.” A splash, then there was mud all over his trousers. “ Hugs. We can go back if you want. "

Hux pushed the hood away from his face. A few strands of coppery hair fell on his eyes. "But you love being right, don’t you? I do not wish to take that away from you, not even if it’s my homeplanet we are talking about.”

"I only wanted you to believe me. The Republic would have never committed genocide."

"You are misinformed, then."

"And yet someone's home."

"Inconsequential."

"Hux."

"What do you want me to say, Dameron?" The ghost - the house - was looking at them from across the fields. "That I am glad that someone survived? That they are now living happily in my childhood home? "

"It's still your people."

"The Order were my people. And they’re no more. "

The wind, coming from the other end of the valley, carried the smell of firewood and roasted meat.

"I just wanted you to see with your own eyes that no amount of destruction-"

"Please spare me your pathetic talk about hope and second chances. If your intention was to make me realise - what words did you use? - that there is something human in me and that not everything is lost, my father's house was the last place where you should have taken me."

"It is no longer your father's house. It's yours."

"Tell it to the people who are currently occupying it. They will be delighted."

"Why don't you tell them yourself? Look. Someone’s coming. "

Poe was right. An elderly man was advancing along the path.

\--  
Brightly colored sheets were drying under a canopy, sheltered from the rain. Clumsy-looking birds prowled between them, occasionally bowing their heads to catch a bug crawling through the mud.

The old barn was wider than Hux remembered. It had been turned into a home, as it appeared, and a boy was sitting before the doorway, sewing a button on the sleeve of a shirt. He raised his head to acknowledge their presence, offering a smile to the old man, a curious stare to Poe, and an indifferent glance to Hux.

The house had been damaged. A barchessa had collapsed, probably after the bombing, and now a brick building was standing in its place, covered by a strong tiled roof.

The large entrance door

_a wide hand grabbing his wrist shouts lights noise shooting blasts lights more lights the grip around his wrist burning the door wouldn’t open_

was gone. Only a lintel was now separating the outside of the house from the inside, and Hux saw, half hidden in the dark, the large entrance staircase leading to the upper apartments.

He had called that house a ghost, but he was no longer sure he had used the right word. Ghosts

_and where had he learned it, if not in that place, curled up under the kitchen table while a woman who was too thin and too young prepared dinner for the masters and sometimes told him about the fairies and the goblins who inhabited the lios beneath the hill_

were born from regret. That thing that once was the mansion of his family, however, was born from something else. Something Hux couldn’t still give a name to, but which made his stomach ache - the same feeling given by Dameron's hand, now gently closed around his forearm, forcing him to turn around and take a breath, and then another one.

The old man invited them inside.

The wooden planks that covered the entrance floor had been removed. A simple beaten mud pavement was now in their place, and its center was occupied by a hearth where a man and woman, both with straw-coloured hair, were roasting some meat. From the rooms located on the upper floor - which, a long time ago, had been used by his father, his stepmother, and their most illustrious guests - came the amused shrieks of a group of children.

Hux took a seat on a bench carved from a tree trunk and looked around, feeling overwhelmed.  
A girl, her hair his exact shade of red, appeared from the corridor that once led to the kitchens, and stared at him curiously.

"You come from the Academy?", she asked him without preamble. Her strong accent reminded Hux of sea storms and custard cream. He couldn't recall, for the life of him, what custard cream tasted like.

"What?"

"The Academy. You live there? You're one of the Mullans, aren't you?"

"We're travelers," said Poe, sitting down next to Hux. Someone had already put a beer in his hand. Unbelievable.

The girl laughed.

"You may be. But him?" she pointed her finger towards Hux. "He's from the valley. How could it be I have never seen him around?"

Hux inhaled deeply, and took the beer from Poe’s hand without asking for permission. "I've been away. For a while. "

The girl whistled, clearly not believing a single word.

"All right, Mister Traveler. Let's see if I can get you and your friend something to eat. "

-

The sun had set.  
Hux had by now lost count of how many people had associated him with this or that other family, and of how many pints he had shared with Dameron.

His companion seemed perfectly at ease in the midst of the chaos of that improvised communal dinner. He had managed to craft a credible story for both of them - two traveling mechanics looking for old Imperial ships to disassemble

"The money that some collectors are willing to spend, you would never believe it-"

and he was now sitting next to Hux, with a heavy blanket wrapped around his shoulders and a plate of roasted vegetables in his hands.  
From time to time Hux seemed to detect, in his gaze, a question Dameron did not have the courage to ask. What question it was, Hux had no idea. Whatever it was, it was quickly replaced by something warmer, something Hux had learned to associate with the pilot and which always managed to make him feel uneasy.

"I need to go for a walk", he said abruptly, leaving his glass on the bench and making his way to the back of the house.

Maratelle's garden had been transformed into a pasture land, and some woolly animals lingered to graze the spiky grass despite the late hour.

But the tree was still there - at the end of the enclosure, right beside the river.  
His hollow trunk could no longer hide him, but it was wide enough for Hux to put his arm inside, and retrieve-

"Are you ok?"

Dameron was approaching him as he often did in the months following the end of the war, as if Hux was a terrified animal about to jump over the edge of a ravine rather than being caught.  
He wasn't entirely wrong, after all.

"I left something in here long ago," he replied in a practical tone. "I wanted to see if it was still there."

The inside of the trunk was wet with rain and mushrooms. Something cold and metallic protruded from a crack in the wood. Hux made a triumphant exclamation.

"What is that?"

Hux opened his hand, revealing a tiny metal kitten covered in orange paint.

"She's Millicent. I left her here before leaving with my father."

Poe ran the tip of a finger down the cat's stiff tail, delicately lingering on the open palm of Hux's hand.

"Will you tell them who you are?"

"Once they will find out that I don't belong to any of the local clans, it won't take them long to figure it out for themselves. I don't think they will appreciate it."

Dameron’s eyes were impossibly big.

"My father wasn't a good landlord", Hux continued.

"But your mother was one of them. She might still- "

Hux’s laugh was miserable. "I doubt it. I haven’t seen her. "

"Maybe she didn't like living here."

Hux scoffed. "Can't really blame her, can you?"

Dameron sighed, and retrieved his hand. "Well, maybe now that you are back she might change her mind. If she is still... I mean, there is no reason for her to be- "

"Brendol Hux's lover, back to this place? Really?"

Poe threw his hands up in the air. "She was a little more than a child. You told me that. It wasn't her fault. "

"People are cruel."

"Your father was cruel. Not the rest of your kind. Not these people. "

Hux studied the tree trunk for a heartbeat. And then.

"What about me? Am I cruel?"

Poe gave him a dismayed look. "Are you really asking me that?"

But Hux answered him with silence, so Poe took a deep breath.

"Fine, then. No, Starkiller, I do not think you are cruel. Determined, surely, and cynical, probably, and ambitious, resilient, resourceful, clever, insufferable, unyielding. Some of your past actions  
can certainly be described as cruel but I do not think that you are... intrinsically heartless.” He nervously laughed. “But maybe it's just me finding an excuse because I've been wanting to kiss you for weeks, and, at this point, I think that there might be something wrong with me."

Hux cleared his throat.

"For weeks."

"Yup. Been a while. "

His eyes were fixed on the ground. Hux smiled, warmer than he intended to be.

"Poor Dameron."

The pilot crossed his arms over his chest. "Indeed."

Hux found his distress charming. Maybe he was a bit cruel, after all.

"Well, as you said, I'm not heartless. It would be inhumane to keep you waiting much longer"

It was strange to kiss Poe Dameron under the tree where he used to play as a child, but his mouth was soft and his skin was warm, and his hands were at the same time tender and bold, and they played with Hux’s hair and with the buttons of his shirt, and Hux had taken his face in his hands and stroked his cheekbones with his fingertips, he had licked the inside of Poe’s mouth and drawed a series of delicious little moans, and later, much later, he had lied on his back on the grass, the palms of Poe's hands hot against his belly, his chest bared to the chilly evening air and later, much, much later, muffling his orgasm against the other man's neck, he thought that maybe, just maybe, he might go back inside and find the girl whose hair was so similar to his own and tell her his name. Maybe, just maybe.

For the moment he was happy to lie under the tree where he used to play as a child, beneath clouds heavy of rain grazed by the gray light of two moons, and with Dameron covering his chest and shoulders and neck with open-mouthed kisses, holding him close and waiting for the storm to break out and for the sky to shatter over their heads.


End file.
